The Era of Easy Money Is Over

Friday after the market closes is always an exciting time for me because that’s when the Fed’s H.8 data on commercial banking assets and liabilities is released.  The data has a one week lag, but it represents a fairly up-to-date picture of lending activity.  Friday’s release was for the week ending August 14 and showed that totalbanking credit declined by $6.4 billion on the week with loans and leases declining by $10.6 billion.  This decline in credit creation during the dog days of summer should not be, in and of itself, too troubling, but it is consistent with an emerging trend of decelerating credit growth
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